I told myself we weren't happy...

On the couch. Dark. Quiet. 

 I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake.

 I almost reached for the phone about a thousand times. 

 I thought I could take it back, erase it, explain

 I had momentarily lost my mind. 

Then I told myself we weren't happy. 

 That was the truth. That what we were was safe. 

It was unfair to you and to me to stay 

in a relationship for that reason. 

 I thought about Clementine and the spark when I was with her, 

but then I thought what you and I had was real

 and adult and therefore significant even if it wasn't much fun. 

 But I wanted fun. I saw other people having fun and I wanted it. 

Then I thought fun is a lie, that no one is really having fun;

 I'm being suckered by advertising and movie bullshit... 

then I thought maybe not, maybe not. 

 And then I thought, as I always do at 

this point in my argument, about dying.

I projected myself to the end of my life 

in some vague rendition of my old man self. 

 I imagined looking back with a 

tremendous hole of regret in my heart.

I didn't pick up the phone to call you, Naomi. 

 I didn't pick up the phone.